The Lake Charles echo. [volume] (Lake Charles, Parish of Calcasieu, La.) 1876-1898, 1887-01-08
The ssrong Case.


In common Justice we have re-
Trained from any.endeavort TO prejndgc
the case of ex-Secretary of State
Strong; certainly not from motives Of
personal friendship, as the gentleman
is but slightly known to us, and the
only action of his, in the distribution
of ticket.paper, that ever affected us
at all was, no doubt unintentionally
on his part, source of much annoy
ance to us at the time. We were then
connected with the Times. Mr.. Strong
came to Shreveport and for some rea-
son made an arrangement with the
proprietor of the other paper here by
which we could only get the paper for
printing tickets from the latter and
were subjected to extremely vexatious
delay and Inconvenience theFEHnent.
So much for personal relations. On
the other hand, most, if not every one
of our "reform" contemporaries in
the State, conspicuous among whom
are the editor of the Pieayune and our
neighbor of the Times, have made the
Strong matter the subject of innu-
merable comments, with the plain OBJ
ject Of loading Governor McEnery
with the odium of the defalCation for
which the ex-Secretary Of State stands
indicted before the courts, whose
province it is alone to decide as to his
guilt or innocence. In their eager
ness to make such political capital as
they thought the case could yield,
they have prejudioed it and declared
Strong guilty Of the charge. They
have thus ignored the right of the
accused to a fair and impartial hear
ing, and pitiIessly filed the hearts of
his innocent family with indescriba-
bic anguish, in advance of the decision
of the courts.
But the guilt or innocence of Strong
is small matter with our contempt
rares. The Governor is the target
they aim at, and they do not concern
themselves about the difficulties which
surrounded this case by reason of the
fact that the special law which places
the disposition of funds for the pur-
chase of tioket-paper in the hands "I
the Secretary of State, an official who
is not required to furnish bond Or any
security for such funds in his hands,
unfortunately fails also TO stipuIate II
time or manner for accounting for the
same.
The Governor is not a prosecuting
officer, nor has he any authority in
law to remove from Office one Of his
own appointees, and could do no more
than to urge Mr.. Strong to render an
account. The attorneys of the latter
held that prescription had ensued be-
cause the Auditor and Governor, being
aware of his failure to render an &C
count, had not brought the matter to
the attention OF a grand jury or of the
prosecuting officers of the State,
within the time prescribed by law.
The Acknowledgement and District
Attorney submitted a counter opin-
ion, and the plea of prescription was
overruled by Judge Burgess, and by
that decision the responsibility sought
to be laid upon the Governor by the
"reform press was set aside as well.
So far as Mr. Strong is concerned,
we had hoped that he could clear
himself Of this charge, or at least show
that his sin was only one Of bad bust
ness management, in not collecting for
paper furnished newspaper Offices and
others. In the latter endeavor, he has
furnished long list of names setting
forth the amounts due by them, aud
asked that these parties be summoned
as witnesses i'll his behalf. Unfor-
tunately, however, for his case all the
parties living in this parish named by
him positively aver that they are not
in debt to Mr.. Strong to the amount
of a dollar. If this denial be at all
general, he will have greatly injured,
in place of benefitting his case, by the
plea put forward.